


Fire With Fire

by lupre



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Campaign: Balance (The Adventure Zone), Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, F/F, Mostly Canon Compliant, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death - The Stolen Century (The Adventure Zone), The Adventure Zone-Typical Swearing, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 01:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28538397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lupre/pseuds/lupre
Summary: When she was sure Lucretia was distracted, she let her eyes slip away from the stars. She watched Lucretia’s face, trying to memorize her features, drinking her in like she, too, would be destroyed by the Hunger when it arrived.Lucretia leaned against Merle’s picket fence and stared up at the sky. The moonlight reflected off of her skin, casting her as a luminous angel against the backdrop of celestial bodies. Lup wished, suddenly and fervently, that tomorrow would never come.—Where Lup falls for Lucretia from the very beginning and never acts on it; Lucretia ruins everything; and again and again, they return to each other.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans & Lup, Lup & Taako (The Adventure Zone), Lup (The Adventure Zone) & Everyone, The Director | Lucretia & Lup, The Director | Lucretia/Lup
Comments: 5
Kudos: 10





	1. Ignition

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a Lupcretia longfic which I plan on updating every Sunday (possibly more often since i've written pretty far ahead). there's a focus on Stolen Century, but it should eventually cover the whole Balance timeline. chapters are on the shorter side, around 1k-2k, i'm aiming to make them longer after a while though. please leave a comment or kudos if you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucretia gets a nickname, Magnus gets a black eye, Taako gets a sandwich.

The first time Lup made Lucretia laugh, it felt like being on fire. Worse, even — Lup had been on fire before, quite a few times, and it was nothing compared to this all-encompassing, dizzying, aching burn.

She hated it. 

She was annoyed that the quietest, most boring recruit even had the power to make her feel this way. But it was the truest burning she had ever felt, reckless and uncharitable and exactly right. A reward for a game she hadn’t meant to start playing.

It happened at the bar on the night before they were set to depart on the Starblaster. Magnus had found a way to start a boisterous, almost friendly brawl that seemed to involve almost everyone in the establishment. There were people knocking over tables, slinging spells into plates of food, upending pints of fantasy beer over each other’s heads. Taako had deftly slipped into the adjacent casino room and was emptying the gold from the slot machines while they were left unattended. The two of them had spent the better part of the evening hustling some poor suckers out of their shoes, but now that things were getting a little rowdier, Lup doubted there would be any more opportunities to shoot pool. She was trying to decide whether to join Taako in the casino room or jump into the fray and break out an especially powerful fire spell she’d been experimenting with, but something else caught her eye. 

There was someone _sitting_ underneath a pool table in the center of the room. A small, compact silhouette with dark brown skin, a shock of pure white hair, and a brilliant red robe that looked out-of-place on someone so clearly bookish. Lup recognized Lucretia, the IPRE voyage’s record-keeper and the crewmember she was least familiar with. She appeared to be scribbling frantically in a thick black notebook — maybe practicing for her job aboard the Starblaster? 

Lup rolled her eyes. It was dangerous and borderline stupid for anyone to be sitting quietly in the middle of a bar fight. Lucretia had never struck her as the risk-taking type, but then again Lup was already certain that no one on the Starblaster’s crew was exactly what they seemed. She had a pretty good read on Magnus — a skilled fighter with a taste for unnecessary bravado — and Barry — a straight-up nerd whose nerdy magical abilities might eventually prove useful — and of course she knew Taako better than she knew herself. But Davenport, Merle, and Lucretia remained unfamiliar. 

Lup figured now was as good a time as any to get to know her new crewmate. She stood up from behind the bar to her full height — five foot ten, a whole inch taller than Taako, which she never failed to rub in his face, and he never failed to point out that while she might be taller, he was the funny sex number of inches in height — and blasted the bulky half-orc standing in her way with a Magic Missile, clearing a path to the center table. She leaped over a toppled barstool and some shattered glass to slide easily beneath the table with Lucretia. 

“Hey. What are you doing down here?” Lup hissed, and Lucretia finally looked up from her notebook. Her eyes were a deep, rich brown, probably good for convincing hostiles to take pity on her, but right now she looked annoyed. 

“I’m working. I don’t see the point to leaving these last couple days out of our record — they could shed some valuable insight on…” The rest of her sentence was lost as Davenport screeched _“everybody stop”_ over the sound of Magnus slamming two ruffians’ heads together. Lup rolled her eyes again, but she wasn’t even sure who she was rolling them at. This whole party, in general? She had expected that she and Taako would have charmed everyone into obeying their every whim by this point, but apparently not. 

“Uh, sure, Luc. You know if you start going by Luc, we’re going to have problems? That’s kinda my IP. I mean if it was… I don’t know, Loof, or Louuuuu” — Lup drew out the _oo_ sound — “there would be less confusion, but _p_ and _c_? Not going to work, sorry.” 

Lucretia rolled her eyes. Lup was aghast. The _nerve_ of some people. “Dude, rolling your eyes is _also_ my IP. Back off.” And then, suddenly, Lucretia was laughing. Her laugh was silvery and loud. It burst out of her wildly, like an inhabiting spirit. Lup kind of liked it.

No, she didn’t. What was she thinking? She opened her mouth to say something, but Lucretia cut her off. “You can’t _own_ the concept of rolling your eyes. That’s, like, a universal thing. Also, you’re the only person who has ever called me Luc.” 

Lup couldn’t think of a good response to this, so she said, “Whatever. I’m going to go see if there is any gold left in the casino room. Peace.” She threw herself out from under the table with a swirl of her robe and then poked her head back in. “Not everything's about the job, you know. Are you going to write this _bad, shitty_ conversation down in your little book, too?” 

As Lup made her exit, she could’ve sworn she heard Lucretia mumble, “Maybe I will.” 

— 

The following morning, the Starblaster crew’s shared quarters was filled with the sounds of abject misery as all seven of them awoke with massive hangovers — some with physical scrapes and bruises as well. Lup winced when she saw Magnus's eye, which was mottled purple and red and swelling a little. She wasn't going to waste a healing spell on it, though. She didn't want to gain a reputation as the group's resident babysitter. She was more of a cool aunt, or maybe just the pyromancer next door. 

Lup hoped she was never an aunt. She _did_ cast a quick Restoration on herself and Taako while everyone else filed out into the hallway, however; it was probably best for them to be alert and aware this morning. Taako said, "I could've done that myself," in a friendly way, which was as close as they ever got to thank-you's, and the two of them headed after the rest of the group. 

As their ground crew ran through a number of routine checks and tests in the launch room with the help of Davenport and Barry, Taako and Lup tossed a chromatic orb of fire back and forth to keep busy. Eventually Taako got bored and let it slip out of his hands, causing it to burst on Merle’s head and set his hair aflame. In a panic, Magnus stripped off his shirt and threw it over Merle’s head to smother the fire, leaving everyone standing in awkward positions to avoid rudely staring at Magnus’s abs. 

Luckily, within minutes of Magnus ruining his shirt, one of the ground crew had appeared with a new one. But in that interim time, when Magnus was shirtless and Merle seemed on the verge of tears as he tried to gather his remaining hair into a bun, Lucretia caught Lup’s eye and shook her head disapprovingly. Just slightly, but it was enough to make Lup’s heart sink. She thought, _maybe no more playing catch with chromatic orbs._ And then she thought, _fuck Lucretia, she’s not the boss of me,_ and summoned another one. 

By this point Taako had wandered off in search of a breakfast sandwich, and Lup was left with a ball of lightning and no one to throw it to. She juggled it between her hands for several seconds and then tossed it behind her in what she hoped was a very subtle manner. 

There was a loud yelp. Lup turned slowly to see Davenport and Barry standing behind her. Davenport’s mustache and fluffy hair were crackling with electricity. Oh, boy. 

“That wasn’t me,” Lup announced. Davenport frowned.

“Guys, enough fucking around, okay?” The word _fuck_ sounded strange to Lup in their captain’s high-pitched, squeaky voice. Davenport looked around for Taako, who was just returning with what appeared to be an artisan panini-style BLT. Where he had found an artisan panini-style BLT in the sparse, sterile headquarters of a scientific research organization, Lup had no idea. Maybe it was conjured. Taako saw Davenport and let out a snort of laughter. Lup widened her eyes at him, and he took a huge bite of sandwich to stifle his giggles.

“Good, now everyone’s here.” Davenport looked around their little circle. Merle was furiously patting the burned parts of his hair, Magnus was standing with his arms crossed looking somewhat sheepish about his earlier stripping, Barry was doing some sort of weird salute thing, Taako was going pretty wild on his BLT, and Lucretia was rubbing her temples with two fingers. Davenport took a deep breath and said, “We’re ready for takeoff.”

Looking back on it, Lup was convinced that this was the exact moment it all went to shit. 


	2. The World's Worst Quiche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako makes quiche, Lup introduces new metaphors, and Barry and Lucretia do some research.

“Can we _not_ talk about this right now?” Taako glanced up at her, his normally soft eyes blazing with annoyance. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m doing something.” 

Lup grabbed a wooden spoon and stabbed at the “something” in question. “Taako, this looks like… a rock. Are you making a rock?”

“It’s quiche,” he insisted. “It’s a brunch delicacy made with peppers, eggs, cheese, and local seasonings, perfect for entertaining company or any special occasion.” 

Peering over his shoulder, Lup saw he was reading directly from the cookbook — something he had swiped in a village bakery as they were passing through. “I know what quiche is” — here Taako interrupted to say “you wouldn't know quiche if it bit you on the ass,” but Lup just raised her voice to speak over him _—_ “but, one, it’s eleven p.m., so not exactly brunch time, and two, this is a round slab of cement. I could put it in my fucking garden as a stepping stone.” 

Taako frowned and squinted at her. “You have a garden? My dude, I need rosemary, like, ten minutes ago.”

“We live in the same house, ding-dong. There’s no garden. Now come on, we’ve got shit to do with Barry and Lucretia.” 

They were now in the third year, not that anyone was counting. Not that they had any idea whether this would ever end. Lup hadn’t exactly thrived during the first and second years, and although he hadn’t said anything, she suspected Taako felt the same. Both planets were absent of any humanoid beings — the first occupied solely by animals, the second by huge, amorphous flying creatures — and the completely foreign settings made it even harder to adjust to the reality of their situation. They’d seen the mysterious comet-like light that preceded their own arrival at each planet and wondered what it might be capable of, but they had never been able to find where it landed on the surface, and they still had a long way to go before they would reach anything close to complete understanding. This third year, however, things were better. They ended up on a planet with technology comparable to that of their home, occupied by draconic humanoids similar to tieflings and dragonborns, and within a few months they had set up a laboratory with magical and scientific equipment.

Lup had found herself getting very involved in the lab crew’s efforts to understand what was happening to them — specifically in regards to the Hunger — which were mostly spearheaded by Barry. Lucretia normally hung around as they worked, taking notes and making the occasional suggestion. Her limited knowledge of magic was already expanding very quickly, and despite herself Lup was proud. 

Taako stubbornly sprinkled some parmesan on his quiche. “What’s the point? I hate hanging out with Barry. That dude has a stick so far up his ass it’s poking out of his nose. And we’ve made literally no progress.” 

“Okay, you don’t _hate_ Barry…”

“I do, swear to _God_ I do _._ ” Taako waved a spatula in the air wildly like he was hitting an imaginary Barry. “And Lucretia’s not exactly, uh, rainbows and fuckin’ fairy dust either, and I _don’t_ mean that as a gay euphemism even though she obviously _is_ — ” At this Lup did her best imitation of an innocent stare out the kitchen window. Taako noticed and made a conscious decision to charge right on past it, which Lup appreciated. “I mean whenever I call Barry a dickwad she scribbles it down in her notebook, like she’s trying to make me feel bad or something.”

“Which you definitely don’t.”

“Which I definitely don’t! Listen, Lup, I’m not a _magician”_ — “mmm,” said Lup in a high-pitched tone — “well, I mean, I guess I technically am, oops-a-daisy. Guilty as charged. But we’re not gonna be able to do anything against an all-powerful, malevolent, world-eating force. Like, what’s not clicking for you guys? We have to _run._ ” He looked away from her as he spoke, running a knife around the edge of the quiche pan. His efforts were in vain, though — the thing was burned beyond repair. 

“Hey, let me take a look at that.” Lup took the pan from his hands and flung it as hard as she could out an open window. Ignoring Taako’s wounded “hey!” she conjured up a sprig of rosemary and handed it to him, adopting a mock-serious tone. “Little bro, you’re going to have to start over. Don’t give up, though. I’m sure with lots of time and practice, like at least a year, you’ll be the greatest chef in this world — _oh wait._ ” 

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But, one, I’m not your _little_ bro — in the grand scheme of things, thirteen minutes means _fuck-all,_ and don’t you forget it — and two, if the giant Cookie Monster in the sky keeps gobbling up planes left and right, I should be the greatest chef in the entire universe pretty soon.” 

Lup snorted. “Yeah, right. Call me back when you can make decent scrambled eggs, and maybe we’ll talk.” 

“So suddenly you’re the Gordon Ramsey of the family? What do you know about cooking? FYI, my quiche was delectable!” By the end of his sentence, Taako was yelling out the front door, Lup having already taken her leave. 

Okay, so Taako wasn’t interested in interplanar research. Big deal. They had never been the type of twins who had to do absolutely everything together. 

It was just — well, it was still more fun to do things together. Lup could have used his help. She could tell he was terrified of the Hunger, and he probably wouldn’t be easily swayed from his reluctance to dive deeper in their research. That would become a problem if she ever did what she intended to do, which was crack this fuckin’ thing wide open, pronto. 

He would come around eventually. If Lup had to threaten to tell the entire crew about the stuffed crab he slept with as a kid, so be it.

For now, she guessed she would continue to work with Nerd Lord and his infuriatingly pretty sidekick, Lady Buzzkill. She’d workshop the nicknames with Taako later. 

She was already halfway down the cobblestone path that led from her and Taako’s shared hut, past Barry, Magnus, and Lucretia’s individual homes and Merle and Davenport’s shared home — they had gotten to be close friends over the past two years, and since they were also close in height they had built a diminutive cottage that worked well for both of them — all the way to the lab. Although you couldn’t tell in the dark, this was the largest and most impressive building of their hasty miniature village, made of hewn stone bricks and mortar with the Starblaster’s telescope detached from the ship and fixed atop the roof. 

As Lup pushed open the door, she could hear the clicking and whirring of some piece of equipment coming from within. She dropped her bag — which contained mostly snacks and weird plants she’d found while exploring — on a table in the entryway and went in search of Barry and Lucretia. 

It didn’t take long to find both of them in the machinery room, hovering over a centrifuge with an unfamiliar substance being processed inside it. 

“Uh, what’s up, Team Mystic? Y’all are working late tonight.” Lup positioned herself between Lucretia and Barry, peering over their shoulders at the miracle of science that was taking place before her. “What exactly am I looking at?” 

Lucretia tilted her head up towards Lup and said something, which Lup did her level best to focus on, but in the end it was basically just static to her, because Lucretia’s face was very close to her own and she smelled like fresh citrus and sage in a way that was very distracting. 

Lup blinked. “Run that past me one mo’ ‘gain. I, uh, spaced out.” 

Barry cleared his throat. This was a somewhat pointless activity for him, since his voice seemed to remain gruff no matter what he did. “We’re running samples of various arcane materials, working under the assumption that the Hunger _is_ arcane in nature, and trying to determine the primary composition of its mass so that we can extrapolate what its vulnerabilities might be.” 

“Now — now say it like a normal guy, Barry…” Lup prompted gently, running her fingers through her thick wavy hair and pulling it up into a ponytail. She understood everything Barry had said, of course, but she was trying to use negative reinforcement to make him a better communicator. It was the least she could do, and also things were getting very boring for her already, and teaching Barry presented an interesting challenge. 

“Oh, sure. We’re tryna figure out what the Hunger is made of so we can wreck its shit better. Does that work for you?” 

“Absolutely.” Lup smiled benevolently at him. “And, okay. So what’ve we got sizzling in the saucepan right now?”

“Well, it’s a centrifuge, not a — ”

“I know _,_ Barry. I’m trying to expand my vocabulary to include more cooking-related metaphors. Because Taako’s getting really into the… the craft _._ ”

“Oh. Okay. Right now we’re using it to test some of my DNA and figure out if I’m part orc. My, uh, my old ma used to say my skull was so hard I must not be completely human.” Barry rapped a knuckle against his head.

Lup stared blankly at him. “You guys are staying in the lab past 11 p.m. just to figure out if Barry is part orc?”

Lucretia coughed into her fist to hide a smile, but Lup had already seen it. “Oh my God! That was a lie? Was that — you were joking? Fucking incredible job, Bluejeans! You really had me going!” 

Barry laughed loudly. “Yeah, but we did do the orc thing earlier. Right now we’re actually testing a metal similar to adamantine, trying to figure out if the Hunger could possibly have metallic properties…” 

He continued explaining what they were working on, and Lup continued finding ways to help while also getting on Barry’s nerves as much as possible, and they went on like this for the rest of the year. She kept a running tally in her head of how many times she could get him to say “what the _fuck,_ Lup?” in a single day — her standing record was thirty-four. He didn’t seem to mind any of it, though. Barry was as good-natured as Davenport was uptight and as relaxed as Magnus was energetic. 

Things with Lucretia were different. Lup was always nervous around her, dropping vials of demonic essence, tripping over her words, accidentally throwing her wand when she was trying to cast spells. It didn’t happen _often_ — she was still _Lup_ , obviously, the same Lup who had once won a tight-rope-walking competition without any prior experience — but the momentary lapses into clumsiness were unsettling. There was just something about the other woman that put her on edge. Maybe it was the careful precision and thoughtfulness of Lucretia’s every action that made Lup act as _un-_ precise and unthoughtful as she possibly could. 

Despite all this, the three of them started to build a close friendship this year. They were making progress in their research, however slow it might be, and back then there was still an atmosphere of hope, an idea that the Hunger _could_ be beaten, and that they would be the ones to do it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if it wasn't clear, i messed with canon a lil so that taako learns to cook throughout stolen century instead of as a kid. the only reason for this is i thought the idea of him being a shitty cook at first was funny. next chapter : the light of creation.......


	3. Seeing the Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus makes a discovery.

By the ninth cycle, all pretenses of victory had been abandoned. To Taako and Lup, nine years wasn’t such a long time, but the rest of the group seemed exhausted. Merle, especially, had sunken into a perpetual fog after spending a year sharing his religion with the citizens of Fungston, only to watch all of it be wiped into oblivion. More and more, the responsibility of lifting group morale fell upon the twins’ shoulders, as everyone else seemed to have resigned themselves to living this way forever. 

It was an existence Lup couldn’t imagine in a permanent context. This  _ had  _ to end, otherwise what was the point? What were they  _ doing,  _ except spinning their wheels and waiting for something real, something that wouldn’t be swallowed up and erased in a matter of months? 

At the beginning, it had seemed like a fun game, bouncing from planet to planet, doing what they wanted without threat of consequence or regret. Now it just seemed cruel and unfair. Lup didn't like to think about the things she’d done — the people she had slept with knowing they would be gone in weeks, the houses she had built, the foods she had eaten before scribbling the recipes down to prevent them from being lost forever. Thinking about it was a burden too heavy for her to carry, a guilt so enormous that she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to shoulder it. Once, just a few days before the Hunger came, she had taken out a huge loan and bought an arcane-powered watercraft, with enough sheer magical force inside its engine to travel faster than a diving hawk. She thought it would feel good, crashing over the waves, shouting with laughter when Taako cast Levitate on himself and flung himself off the back of the ship with a rope, but instead it was just… hollow. Because in a matter of hours, the glittering lake was consumed, existing from that singular moment of destruction only in their memories. 

All of their small defeats and letdowns rubbed up against each other in Lup’s mind, a constant sense of dread looming over her every action. She could almost understand why the rest of the team had seemingly lost their will to fight. 

They rarely held group meetings anymore. Everyone was just — disinterested. They all lived separately except for Taako and Lup, who, without meaning to exactly, had integrated themselves into urban society as a way of escaping the IPRE crew’s melancholy. Lup was forcing herself to take classes at a local school of magic, clinging to the idea that if she studied hard enough, if she learned enough spells and harnessed enough power from the elements, she would be able to do something,  _ anything  _ to hurt the Hunger. It had always worked before, and she had yet to encounter a problem that couldn’t be solved with a good fire evocation spell. It was possible that for the Hunger, she would just need a  _ really  _ high-level spell slot. 

Magic was different here, slow and thick and tied with plants in a way that Lup found interesting, if difficult to wrangle. She was learning a lot, even though she struggled to concentrate and got sent out of classes several times for stealing sandwiches and setting her professors on fire. Her prank game would’ve been way better if Taako had been willing to sign up for classes along with her, but he didn’t seem interested. Besides, he was usually busy with his boyfriend — a tall, slender, soft-spoken man who loved clunky jewelry and pyrotechnics. They hadn’t spoken about it, but Lup knew Taako would be wrecked by the inevitable parting at the end of the year. 

It was Magnus who figured it out. Who finally found a way to thwart the Hunger’s less-than-admirable world-killing agenda and kick it right in its proverbial ass. 

He was the first to find the Light of Creation.

That slow, dismal year was winding to a close in exactly the way Lup had expected. Merle rallied himself for just long enough to distribute his idea of party invitations — sticky notes with “Merle’s Apocalypse Extravaganza: Be There or Be Square!” scribbled on them — and they convened in his way-too-small cabin on the final evening of their time in the ninth plane. Taako instantly fell asleep on the couch, Merle kept pouring drinks that no one ever picked up, Davenport started outlining a plan for how to improve the next cycle while Barry pretended to listen, and Lucretia sat quietly in an undersized chair, writing in her notebook. 

Lup had noticed this was a thing Lucretia did when she was uncomfortable or nervous — she just started taking detailed notes of everything that was going on around her, even when she was doing something completely irrelevant to the IPRE mission. None of them had the heart to tell her it didn’t matter anymore, since the mission was basically blown to shit along with their home planet. 

Magnus was conspicuously absent from the gathering, and no one seemed to know where he was. In fact, Lup realized she hadn’t seen him in several days, probably more than a week. Maybe he was trying to help locals shelter from the coming storm, an upsetting and pointless activity he often insisted on. Or maybe he was already dead. Lup grabbed a glass of red wine and took a long drink. She made her way over to Lucretia and sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. 

“This is a real rager, huh?” 

Lucretia smiled thinly. “Yeah. I tried telling Merle it was a bad idea, but he didn’t listen. He said it would raise our spirits.” 

Lup tilted her head back against the wall. “Can you just grab the low-hanging fruit and make a pun about spirits in the context of alcoholic beverages? I’m too tired to figure it out.” 

“Puns make me break out in hives,” Lucretia said. “I can actually take legal action against you if you pun within a twenty-foot radius of me.” 

Lup laughed and then scrubbed her hands through her hair. “This fucking sucks, right? Like, it’s not just me?”

“No, it’s not just you.” Lucretia was quiet for a long moment. “Why don’t we go outside?” 

Lup glanced over at her. “Uh… sure. Yeah, let’s go outside. Sure.”  _ Shut up, Lup. No, it doesn’t  _ matter — Was she really worrying about  _ this _ , when she was about to witness the death of an entire planet? Sometimes she disgusted herself. She got up from the floor and followed Lucretia out of the cabin. 

Despite the telltale signs of the Hunger invading this world — the loss of color, the dying plants, the occasional field of all-seeing eyes blinking at them from the heavens — the night sky remained untouched. It was a rich, velvety black scattered with stars. A semicircle of pinprick planets, like jewels assembled on a crown, was visible just above the horizon. Four moons held court over the quiet landscape, tossing down their silvery light to the city where the seven of them had taken up residence. The enormity of it all made Lup feel a little sick. The black of this sky was so different from the black of the Hunger — one was inviting, a cool mirrorlike surface of undisturbed water, while the other had the indisputable wrongness of swallowing a marble. 

“Do you ever think — ” Lup started, just as Lucretia said “I wish — ”. Both of them cut themselves off, laughing a little. 

“Go ahead.” 

“No, I want to hear yours.” Lup held her breath. 

Lucretia leaned against Merle’s picket fence and stared up at the sky. The moonlight reflected off of her skin, casting her as a luminous angel against the backdrop of celestial bodies. Lup wished, suddenly and fervently, that tomorrow would never come. 

“I don’t even know what I was going to say,” Lucretia said. 

Lup figured that was probably a lie, but she said, “Okay,” and resigned herself to standing in silence. When she was sure Lucretia was distracted, she let her eyes slip away from the stars. She watched Lucretia’s face, trying to memorize her features, drinking her in like she, too, would be destroyed by the Hunger when it arrived.

_ What is this? _

What was she  _ doing? _

“LUP! LUP, LUP, LUP, HEY, HEY, HEY — ” 

She turned to see the imposing six-foot-four figure of Magnus Burnsides barreling towards her like a speeding train. “HOLY FUCK, LUP! YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS!” 

Lup tossed one final glance at Lucretia before sprinting to meet Magnus in the middle of the road outside Merle’s house. “Fantasy Jesus H. Christ, dude, what’s up?” 

“Lucretia, go inside!” Magnus yelled. 

“Uh, okay? That’s — kind of rude, maybe — ” 

“Please, just do it!” 

Lucretia went inside. 

Lup ducked her head, searching for an angle that would let her read Magnus’s face. “Well, damn. Is something wrong?” 

“ _ No _ .” She finally managed to catch his eye, and to her surprise, his entire expression was a shout of barely contained joy. “Lup, I think I figured it out. I think we might be able to save them.” 

Lup’s heart pounded in her chest. “What… what are you saying right now?” 

Magnus took off his backpack and flipped it upside down. Something tumbled out into his hands — something so achingly luminous that Lup could barely look at it. “I’m saying I found the Light.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again i messed with canon a little to make it so that they didn't find the light for the first nine years or really know what it was capable of. in the actual stolen century arc, i think griffin just sort of said "yeah you guys figured out there's this light you can get to save the worlds" but i wanted to take some time to examine what it would've been like without immediately having that knowledge. next chapter : lup remembers some really good soup she had once (a completely original idea that has never been done before in the adventure zone)


	4. Craveability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus tests a theory, Lup takes a nap, the Hunger takes an L.

“Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa. Back the fuck up. You’re telling me that  _ this  _ — ” Lup gestured to the Light of Creation, which Magnus was holding as carefully as if it were his own child. “ — is capable of defending the planet? I mean, it’s cool, no doubt, but it is just kind of a glorified lamp.” 

“I’m telling you  _ I don’t know. _ ” Magnus’s face was washed out by the brilliance of the Light, but Lup could still feel the waves of excitement coming off of him. Magnus was like that sometimes, almost puppyish, his emotions showing through in every flick of the eyebrow and bounce of the heels. She  _ wanted  _ to believe him, but the very idea of it felt dangerous. Too good to be true. 

“Obviously we have no way of knowing what it’s capable of,” Magnus said hurriedly. “And I told Lucretia to go inside because I don’t want anyone else to get their hopes up.” 

Lup squinted at him. “But you weren’t worried about me getting my hopes up?” 

“You’re my friend,” said Magnus, like that was enough. “I mean, let me put it this way: you’re the only one I trust to be realistic about it. You’re the only one who’s not gonna fall apart if I’m wrong.” 

The words shot through Lup like a shard of ice, cutting straight to her core.  _ You’re the only one who’s not gonna fall apart.  _ Was that true? Was she really the strongest among them, or did Magnus just think that? 

“So…” Lup took a deep breath. “What makes you think this thing can… you know…” 

“Save us?”

“Yeah.” She drew out the word, making it almost two syllables. 

“Okay.” Magnus put the Light down on the ground and then stepped back. “So, this might sound… a  _ little  _ crazy. But look at it for a sec, and really feel it. Just tell me how the Light makes you feel.”

Lup’s heart sank. She was looking for a real solution, not some sort of nebulous  _ I-think-it-can-help-so-it-will  _ bullshit. But Magnus was looking at her expectantly, so she crouched down beside the Light and stared directly into it. 

Once, when Lup was a kid, the pond on her grandpa’s farm had frozen over during the winter, and she and Taako had gone skating on it without checking the thickness of the ice. While executing a particularly impressive spiral turn, Lup had fallen through. There was a brief moment of panic and darkness while she clawed at the surface of the ice, and then Taako grabbed her hand and yanked,  _ hard,  _ and she was out. But as she made her way back to the farm house, huddled in Taako’s jacket and dripping icicles, she felt a bone-deep, bitter cold settling into her mouth and lungs like it was going to live there forever. 

Their aunt gave her a towel to dry off and warm clothes to wear, but she still couldn’t get rid of that gnawing ache of cold. She remembered sitting under a pile of blankets with Taako, how he was shivering just as hard as she was, and she wondered why until she realized he wasn’t shaking from the cold. That was when she decided she wanted to learn fire magic — she never wanted to feel helpless like that ever again. 

Then Aunt Lada had brought Lup a steaming cup of French onion soup. She had gulped it down in huge mouthfuls, ignoring the way it burned her tongue, and felt it warm her from the inside, starting in her stomach and spreading a thick heat throughout her entire body like sunlight thawing a carpet of snow. 

That was how looking at the Light of Creation felt. Although it wasn’t physically warm, it had a presence that got under Lup’s skin and changed how she felt. All of the worry and fear she felt about the Hunger was washed away, replaced with a confidence so bright she wouldn't have been surprised to find out she was actually glowing.

It reminded her of another feeling she had once had, that giddying feeling of burning from the inside out. She was thrown back to a moment nine years ago, beneath the pool table. Lucretia’s head thrown back in laughter, exposing the graceful lines of her neck. 

But that was neither here nor there. 

She blinked and looked up at Magnus. “It feels... warm.” He smiled. 

“This thing is the exact opposite of the Hunger, isn’t it?” Lup spoke slowly, tasting the words in her mouth. Standing so close to the Light, she thought she could actually  _ feel  _ the trueness of them.

“Uh-huh.” Magnus nodded. “It  _ wants  _ you to want it. It’s craveable.”

Lup thought this made it sound like a Fantasy McDonald’s breakfast special, but that was a pretty funny concept, so she let it slide. Anyways, Magnus was exactly right. The Light had the same kind of magnetic warmth that existed between any two people who loved each other, and it was slightly unsettling that an inanimate object could recreate that, but Lup wasn’t going to worry about it now.

“I think we need to take it with us,” said Magnus. “I think the Hunger is looking for it, and if it’s not on this planet, the Hunger will have no reason to come here.” 

Lup’s heart sped up again. It made sense. It  _ could  _ work. “Why would it be looking for this, though? Isn’t it kind of the Hunger’s ultimate gross-out?” 

“Looking for it like Darth Vader looks for Obi-Wan,” Magnus said in a deep, ominous voice. Lup frowned.

“Okay, I know what you’re saying, but you  _ get  _ that there was more to that than just hatred, right? Like, Obi-Wan was Anakin’s mentor, basically his  _ father,  _ and — ” 

“Blah, blah, blah. Hey, why don’t we go inside and hang out with everyone? Maybe it won’t be so depressing now that we actually have a chance of  _ not  _ watching this plane of existence be gobbled up.”

“But we can’t tell them that,” Lup pointed out. 

“True…” Magnus bundled the Light of Creation back into his backpack, smothering its glow. Lup felt the absence like a missing limb. “But it might be kinda funny for us to be all jazzed and shit while everyone else is moping.”

Lup glared at him. “Oh, hell no. I think Taako has the right idea. I’m going to take a nap.” 

— 

As the Starblaster took flight the following morning, Lup and Magnus stood together on the deck, practically vibrating with nerves. Everyone (except Davenport, of course, who was driving) had already retired to their cabins, too exhausted to watch the world burn for the ninth time. So no one else was there to watch as Magnus lifted the Light of Creation out of his back, held it up high above his head, and screamed, “COME AND GET IT, ASSHOLE!” 

Lup held her breath. The giant, swirling arms of the Hunger slammed down around them, reaching for the planet below, falling towards it at an unimaginable pace. She remembered every time this had happened before, the black tendrils melting over the surface of planets and swallowing them up in a matter of seconds. 

But this time, all of a sudden, those spikes stopped moving. 

The Hunger roiled in place for a moment, one giant compressed storm of fury and darkness turned almost indecisive by the absence of the Light, before it turned and began chasing after the Starblaster. 

Magnus shouted, “THAT’S RIGHT, YOU GIANT PIECE OF SHIT! WE GOT IT!” and Lup shouted “YOU  _ DUMB _ MOTHERFUCKER!” and then they were both collapsing in laughter, all of the tension going out of their bodies at once, and Lup had never felt so relieved in her entire life. 

_ So  _ this  _ is what it feels like to win.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi ao3, it's me checking in to acknowledge that i screwed with canon AGAIN by having magnus figure out that the hunger is tracking them through the light's craveability, while in the podcast they only figure it out in cycle 82. this just made more sense to me, also it was an accident (pobody's nerfect) <3


	5. Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation & an apology.

They all had a lot of planning to do. The rest of the group was elated upon finding out about the Light of Creation, and although they seemed annoyed that Lup and Magnus had kept it from them on that final night, there was a renewed sense of hope that washed over the Starblaster, cleansing them of the remaining gloom from that one very bad year. Lup imagined a future in which they found the Light of Creation in every plane and kept it from the Hunger until it simply starved and withered away.  _ No one else has to die.  _

As the ship sped towards its next destination, the seven of them gathered around the helm so they could talk while Davenport was steering. 

“You guys know this changes everything, right?” Davenport said. His voice trembled and nearly broke. Lup knew he had been particularly affected by the burden of witnessing so much death, and as a result he was probably desperate to avoid letting it happen again. “From now on our focus needs to be getting the Light instead of trying to understand the Hunger. Depending on where it falls at the beginning of the cycle, we might have to split up, but I don’t care if takes the entire year to find it, we’re keeping that fuckin’ thing out of the Hunger’s hands.” 

“Okay, but this still can’t be a permanent solution,” Barry said, ever the pragmatist. “There are going to be worlds where finding the Light will be impossible. Are you saying we just, what, let those ones go?” 

Lup rested her elbow on the back of Davenport’s chair, examining her nails. She recognized this was an important conversation to have, but it seemed like kind of a downer to do it right after such a great triumph. “If the Hunger is going after the Light, it must  _ need  _ it for some reason,” she said. “Which means if we play keep-away for long enough, the Hunger will starve, don’tcha think?” 

“We have no way of knowing if that’s true,” Lucretia pointed out. “Plus, the Hunger seems to know where the Light is at all times. We need to keep researching if we want to figure out a better way to protect ourselves.” 

“Yeah, or a way to hide the Light from it,” Lup suggested.

Merle scratched his head, making some of his hair come out of its neat bun and stand straight up in staticky wisps. “I — I’m not too sure I feel comfortable letting the Light go uncollected while we sit in a lab making… you know, fancy potions and shit.” 

“Who says we have to pick one or the other?” Barry insisted. “The obvious choice is to split up, with some of us looking for the light and some of us continuing our research. And we can’t be workin’  _ all  _ the time. We’re still human, y’know. And dwarf, and elf, and gnome.” 

“Taako?” Lup tilted her head at her brother, who had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout this entire discussion. He was standing off to the side, tossing his wand up in the air and catching it. “Does all this sound good to you?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, sounds chill as hell. Hey, can I talk to you for a mome?” 

His normal laid-back demeanor seemed suddenly forced, although Lup wasn’t sure if anyone else would have been able to tell. “Yeah, of course.” 

She followed Taako out onto the deck. It was cold and windy out there while the ship was in motion, and Lup wondered why he hadn’t just gone to the great room, which was where they usually hung out. It had tables scattered with half-finished card games and cereal dispensers filled with gummy candies and a coffee machine that hadn’t worked since Magnus accidentally dropped sand in the filter compartment. Coming to the deck meant Taako must have wanted to keep anyone else from overhearing. 

He crossed his arms across his chest and leaned on the railing, gently tapping the toe of one of his boots against the opposite heel. It was a posture that made it very hard for Lup to catch a glimpse of his face from where she stood beside him. 

“Do you know where I was this morning?” Taako asked in a quiet voice. 

“Um. No? Not before we all met up at the ship — is this — is something wrong?” 

“Yeah, kinda. I was saying goodbye to Eletha.”  _ His boyfriend.  _

Lup drew in a deep breath. “Oh.” 

“I — I, uh — ”

“Taako, I’m really sorry — ”

“No, it doesn’t matter, just, like… I thought he was gonna  _ die _ , y’know? I didn’t tell him that, obvs, but I said I had to leave and probably wouldn’t see him again, and, uh. Would’ve really appreciated a quick heads-up on the whole… saving the world thing.” 

Lup bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Damn. I really am sorry. I just didn’t want you to be disappointed if it didn’t work.”

“Oh,  _ fuck that. _ ” Taako turned to face her. 

Sometimes when she looked at her twin, she caught a glimpse of the person he had been a long time ago, or the person he might be in the future. His face held every important memory for her — the gap between both of their front teeth that made them expert whistlers and water-spitters, the thick scattering of freckles across their noses that faded during the winter and came back in the summer, the annoying flyaway wisps of hair that floated around their cheeks and temples. She could see this face taunting her over a chess game that quickly turned into a wrestling match when they were kids. She could see this face smiling down at her own kids someday while he taught them to make s’mores with caramelized bacon. Hell, she saw it in the mirror every day. In a lot of ways, Lup thought, Taako  _ was  _ her mirror. His features were her features, his emotions reflected her own.

But right now, he just looked angry — so angry that he was almost unfamiliar to her. It  _ hurt. _

“Lup, I’ve been disappointed  _ every fucking year _ for the last decade. You’re not gonna make it any easier by trying to shield me from potential letdowns, okay? Like, it’s just water under the bridge at this point. Shit sucks. I thought we didn’t keep secrets from each other.” 

“We… don’t. I’m sorry. I swear to God and Fantasy Jesus it won’t happen again.” 

“It better not.” Taako took his hat off, shook it into perfect pointy shape, and stuck it back on his head. Then he grinned. “Or I’ll collect the hairs every time Davenport shaves his mustache for the next  _ week,  _ and dump them all in your bed.” 

Lup gasped. “You fucking bastard! Wait until you find out what Magnus’s cologne can do to lace clothing.” 

“You wouldn’t  _ dare. _ ” 

“Oh, wouldn’t I?” 

They went on like this for several minutes, coming up with wilder and wilder threats to outdo the other, until finally Merle came outside to tell them he needed a referee for Twister, and the very prospect of this was so absurd that both of them lost interest in their conversation and followed Merle into the great room immediately. But the reminder of what it felt like when Taako was disappointed in her stuck in Lup’s head. She wasn’t sure it would ever leave her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading! please leave a comment or kudos if you liked it <3


	6. Greg Fucking Grimaldis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup makes a few discoveries.

Things went more smoothly in the years following. With the knowledge that they could stave off the Hunger by finding the Light, they never settled back into that deep depression, and they never spoke about how deeply it had affected them all. But the Light of Creation proved to be a much more difficult quarry than Lup had anticipated. 

Magnus explained how, in the final week of the ninth cycle, he had made an expedition into the unexplored highlands outside their city to track down the Light, after using a combination of local gossip and scientific equipment to estimate where it might have landed. Barry and Lup instantly tossed out suggestion after suggestion for how magic might be able to enhance this process, and they were able to set up a fairly reliable system for pinpointing the Light’s location. But this wasn’t always enough. Sometimes it landed on the opposite side of the planet, or in the middle of a dense jungle, or it was claimed and fiercely protected by local sects. The crash site seemed to be completely random, and although there were several successful years, they just couldn’t save everybody. 

Lup grew closer to everyone as their whirlwind journey continued, but especially Barry and Lucretia. The three of them became an efficient team, almost always tagged to do the heavy lifting in terms of research while everyone else explored. They learned that the Hunger functioned essentially as a separate plane of existence, but one with the capability to consume other planes and add them to its mass, sort of like Fantasy The Thing. And they surmised that it was capable of tracking the Light through that feeling Lup had experienced when she first looked at it — the  _ craveability,  _ as Magnus continued to insist on calling it.

The Light and the Hunger weren’t the only things she learned about. In fact, she would say they weren’t even the most  _ important  _ things she learned about. Because she also discovered that Barry always asked for his coffee black — he thought it made him look cool — but kept handfuls of creamer cups and sugar packets in his pockets to doctor it up himself. She discovered that Lucretia often forgot to click her pens off before she tucked them behind her ears, meaning she ended up walking around with smudges of ink on her temples half the time. She discovered that Barry loved surprises, and Lucretia pretended to hate surprises but actually also loved them. 

She discovered that they both sucked ass at pranks. They tried putting some superglue on her chair once, as if she wouldn’t notice. She used a little trick she had learned from Taako to transmute it into pistachio pudding and then ate it right off the chair to spite them. But technically they got the last word, because the pudding was disgusting. 

She discovered that she cared about them, both of them, and that they were her best friends (apart from Taako, of course, who was invaluable not exactly in a scientific context, but for driving Barry and Lucretia up the wall in the most creative ways possible). Lucretia still made her jittery for whatever dumb reason, but the nervous feeling faded into the background and became familiar to her, like a song you’ve heard so many times you start singing along without thinking about the lyrics. 

She really  _ got  _ Lucretia, and Lucretia got her, to the point where they could communicate worldlessly. It wasn’t like with Taako, where he knew her thoughts before she even realized them herself. It took much more effort, but she could tell Lucretia  _ I’m tired  _ or  _ we need to get Barry a fucking snack, immediately  _ or  _ Merle is going to be up in that tree for the next eight to twelve hours and there’s literally nothing we can do about it  _ with nothing but a series of eyebrow movements and scrunched noses. 

It was fun, having friends, having  _ a family  _ that was bigger than just Taako. That, to Lup, was the most important takeaway from those years. 

In Year 18, things changed. It wasn’t a cataclysmic shift, and probably no one even knew about it except for Lup and Taako. But it meant something. She knew it did. 

Although Barry, Lup, and Lucretia enjoyed their work in the lab, staying in one place throughout the whole year and listening to the others’ stories about turqoise hot springs and wild magic and twenty-story felines got old quickly. By Year 15, they devised a loose system where at least two of them would remain in charge of the research operations during any given year, and the other one could choose to help search for the Light, or get involved with local society and culture, or just fuckin’ chill if they wanted to. 

Barry and Lup ran the lab during Year 15, Lucretia and Barry during Year 16. During Year 17, all seven of them stayed fairly close together as they explored a world different from anything they had seen before — different in that it had already been devastated by some mysterious force, or maybe just by the passage of time itself. At first it seemed all that remained were layers of crumbled technology, towering structures and impressive works of art reduced to rubble and dust. But then they came across the robots, the leftover souls, and it led to one of the hardest decisions they had ever had to make. 

Everything in Lup’s body and mind baulked at the prospect of destroying any number of living souls just to keep them out of the Hunger’s grasp. It was  _ unthinkable  _ that they should take on that responsibility, or the guilt that would come someday if they discovered that things consumed by the Hunger could be retrieved. 

When Taako pushed back against her insistence, she thought her heart might break, but she gathered her trademark Lup courage and told him he was wrong. She  _ had  _ to. But then she saw the glint of pride in his eyes, the little half-smile on his face as he watched her fling her arms out in front of the soul crystal. And she knew that, even if he was on the other side of this argument, even if couldn't bring himself to back her play, he understood.

It wasn't about the simple act of destruction. It was about what it would cost them. It was about losing their empathy, their regard for human life. Because if they lost that, then they had  _ nothing _ . Lup thought, she  _ hoped _ , that Taako understood this. 

They finally agreed to bring the crystal aboard the Starblaster with them. As they looked back at an already shattered world, Lup told them exactly what she thought of all that bullshit about the Hunger's assimilation being permanent. She told them something she knew in her bones, as deep as her love for buttered rolls or her hatred for glitter glue, that someday they were going to save every single plane that had been lost. 

And then, just as Taako started to scratch his forearm uncomfortably in the way he always did when people were expressing their emotions in a genuine and forthright manner, Lup said, "I have to believe that, to keep doing what we do. Because I  _ have _ to believe" — and at this point her voice cracked with genuine passion — “that I'm gonna get those fifteen dollars back from Greg  _ fucking _ Grimaldis!" 

All six of them shouted with laughter as Lup looked on darkly.  _ Oh, let them have their laugh. One day my wrath will be unleashed on Greg Grimaldis, and the conflict will be as great and terrible as — as when Fantasy Mario slayed Fantasy Bowser, and the blood will run red in the streets —  _

"Lulu."

She blinked. "Yeah?"

"You can stop talking about Greg Grimaldis now."

"Oh. Uh, didn’t realize I was saying that out loud, whoops."

Taako grinned widely. "Don't even worry about it, babe. We're gonna slam that guy's nuts so far up into his tiny brain that his great-grandkids will cry out for mercy. Start shit, get hit, that's the Taako catchphrase."

Lup sniffed. "You make me so proud sometimes."

"Yeah, I know." 

"And you have way too many catchphrases. I've never even heard that one before."

"Yeah, I know." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hate greg grimaldis


	7. Hamster Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merle LARPS, sort of; Lup tries a new flavor of Bugle; Davenport tries to keep the team meeting on track.

It was the beginning of Year 18. They touched down on a high platform just outside a huge, gleaming colorful city. Bubble-shaped transports floated around pink and purple skyscrapers with waterfalls cascading down their sides. The most notable feature of the city was the network of semi-transparent plastic tubes that crisscrossed between buildings, with a constant stream of apparently humanoid beings traveling through them. 

Merle pressed his face up against the glass of the Starblaster window. “Holy shit! You guys, this is a hamster paradise! This — this — this whole city is just one giant Habitrail!” 

Taako was standing over by one of the gummy candy dispensers, having spun the knob all the way to the right to create a veritable fountain of gummy candy tumbling down into his travel bag. He momentarily abandoned this effort to peer over Merle’s shoulder at the world below. “Oh, _God_ . No, Merle, this is fuckin’... Fantasy Meet the Robinsons. No, it’s Fantasy Robots. No, wait, wait, wait, it’s Fantasy The Lorax. We’re getting some _serious_ Lorax vibes up in here. Do you guys think I could grift these dipshits into buying regular-ass air — ” 

“We’ve reached hamster heaven,” breathed Merle, completely ignoring Taako. “I am going to — I’m never gonna leave this place! It’s beautiful! Am I — am I crying?”

“What the fuck, Merle,” said Lup, only because someone had to say it. “I didn’t know you were into hamster LARPing. Actually, I take that back. Anyone who’s known you for more than five minutes would not be surprised to find out that you’re into hamster LARPing.”

“Oh, shaddap. I’ve reached my own personal version of nirvana and you all are completely harshing my vibe.” 

Magnus popped his head in from the adjacent room. “Nirvana, as in Kurt Cobain? I fuckin’ _love_ — ” 

He was cut off by everyone sighing “No, Magnus,” at the exact same time. 

“Oh, okay. So are we going to hamster heaven or what?”

— 

Even Lup had to admit that hamster heaven was pretty tight. They were welcomed to the city by someone who introduced themself as a “district leader”, a humanoid with a face somewhat reminiscent of a koala. They used one of their own spell slots to cast Tongues instead of making one of the seven of them do it, which was a pretty good start in Lup’s book, and they were also happy to direct Lup and Lucretia to the nearest scientific facility. 

The two of them were given a quick and very confusing tour, given that they had little to no knowledge about this society in general. The building initially seemed bustling with constant activity, filled with folks in light hazmat gear conducting research and testing products, but there was an entire floor at the very top that was apparently unused. They were given full permission to set up shop there.

The seven of them usually spent at least a week or two living out of the Starblaster while they found ways to get established in whatever world they had landed in. Here, that wasn’t necessary, because the koala person provided them all with an enormous hotel suite in the middle of the city, where they could sleep for several nights or until they had a sense of how they would spend the rest of the year. Lup and Lucretia met back up with the rest of them at the hotel after their tour.

“So I think we’ve established me and Luc are out of commission for this one,” said Lup. She was hanging upside down from Taako’s bed, which was sort of like the top bunk in a bunk bed except it was oval-shaped, framed in something like glass or clear plastic, and hanging from the ceiling. “We have mad sciencey shit to do.” 

“Yeah, we got that,” Taako said as he popped a crunchy corn snack from the hotel lobby into Lup’s mouth. It was shaped exactly like a Bugle and tasted like a Bugle. She thought it was a real miracle that Bugles somehow existed in this far-off plane. She did her best to eat it while upside down, but ended up choking and falling off the bed. Taako stepped neatly out of the way. 

“Damn.” Lup rubbed her head a little. “That was like — you know the Bugles caramel n’ cheddar mix bags? That was like, _both at the same time._ That is fucked up. Merle, can I get a quick heal?” 

“From the fall or the Bugle?” Taako asked. 

“Uh, both.” 

Merle reached a hand into the bag of corn snacks and shoved several of them in his mouth at once, making no indication that he had heard Lup’s request for healing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. These are delicious.” 

Okay, so he _had_ heard her, he was just choosing to ignore it. Typical. 

Barry cleared his throat and offered Lup a hand up from the ground. “So, uh, why don’t we start planning what the rest of us are gonna — ”

“Did you guys think that kind individual who greeted us and escorted us to this hotel looked a little like a hamster?” Merle interrupted. 

There was a chorus of _No_ ’s, and Merle sighed. 

“They had more of a koala thing going on, I think,” Taako said with his mouth full of Bugles.

Barry crossed and uncrossed his arms. “Yeah, I was — I was feeling the koala vibes, too. Anyways — ” 

“So maybe we’re in koala heaven? Not hamster heaven?” asked Merle hopefully. “Like, it’s still definitely heaven. My godly instincts are telling me that much.” 

“Merle,” Lucretia said, exasperated. “It can’t just be, like, whatever animal humanoid we happen to have seen most recently, and then heaven. There are all sorts of folks in this world.”

“Yeah,” Taako agreed as he moved over to the suite’s floor-to-ceiling window, from which they had an impressive view of the city and the streets below. “Like, they all look like different animals to me.” He pointed at one person in particular, and everyone crowded around to look where he was pointing, although Lucretia mumbled “this is very rude” as she did so. “ _They_ look like a cockatiel. _They_ look like a praying mantis. Oh, my God.” He cackled. “This poor fucker looks like a shrimp.”

“Shrimp heaven?” Merle tried. 

“No, that fucking sucks. That’s nothing,” said Davenport. “We can keep calling this place hamster heaven if you want, I don’t think anybody gives a shit.” 

“Okay.” Merle sat down in a high-backed armchair, defeated. His stubby little legs didn’t come close to touching the ground. “But you all have to say it too, you have to promise — ”

“Oh, I am _not_ — ” Magnus started, cutting Merle off. 

“AHHH!” Barry yelled, cutting Magnus off. “I _do not_ have the patience for this! Please, God, can we make a plan!” 

“Jeezy creezy,” said Davenport mildly. “You don’t have to be like _that_ about it.” 

Barry collapsed into an armchair and started rubbing his temples with the tips of his fingers. 

Taako, apparently taking pity on him, shoved some Bugles into Barry’s mouth. “I’m fine to hang out here in the city, unless you guys need me to help find the Light.”

“From what I can tell, it touched down on the other end of this continent, but with the Starblaster it shouldn’t be too hard to find,” Magnus reported. “Merle, Cap’nport, Barry? You coming with?”

“I’m staying right here,” Merle announced, while Davenport and Barry nodded at Magnus. 

Taako sighed heavily in the background. “Cool. Looks like I’m spending the year with Jimmy Buffett’s hamster fursona over here.” 

“We’ll be back in a couple months, probably,” said Magnus. “And until then you can always drop in on the L-Team.”

“Mmm, don’t like that,” Lucretia said. 

Magnus adopted a wounded look. “But — Lucretia? And Lup? At the _lab,_ get it? Like A-Team, but — ” 

“Oh, we _get_ it,” Lup assured him. “But we’re not gonna be taking any L’s this year, so… it doesn’t really work. Sorry, Maggie.” 

Lucretia rolled her eyes. “That’s — I think that might have been the worst way you could have possibly put it, but yeah, I guess, no L’s. God, it sounds even worse when I say it.”

Davenport clapped his hands. “Okay, so we have a plan! Hands in the middle, everyone!” No one got up. In the momentary silence, Taako tossed a Bugle at Magnus, who caught it in his mouth. Davenport put his own hand out in front of him and then threw it up in the air. “ _Annnd_ … break!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is an important cycle don't let the dumb shrimp heaven now reference fool you


	8. Welcome to the Man Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup and Lucretia investigate the Light. Later, Taako and Merle have unexpected dinner guests.

Team Mystic — the only name that had really stuck for the research group, which was one of Lup’s deepest regrets, because Fantasy Pokémon was for nerds — had moved their focus from the composition of the Hunger to the composition of the Light, theorizing that taking down the Hunger permanently would probably require them to use the Light in some new way. Although it disappeared when the Starblaster reset at the end of each cycle, Lucretia had taken down several pages of data about it, which she and Lup were now poring over. 

“So… if it’s not actually a  _ physical  _ presence…” Lucretia flicked her pen in circles absentmindedly. “How can we possibly harness it, for any purpose, especially when we don’t even know its magical affiliation?” 

“Hmm.” Lup was lying on an incredibly comfortable couch she had stolen from the lobby and then claimed as her favorite spot in the lab for both brainstorming and napping. It was oval-shaped and didn’t actually have a back, but sinking into it felt like jumping off a cliff with Feather Fall, something Lup had done many times. “Do we  _ have  _ to know the affiliation, or can we just start throwing spells and stuff at it and see what sticks? Like, there’s gotta be any number of ways we can enhance its power with magic, regardless of where it gets its power.” 

“Well, yeah, but we don’t want to risk harming it in any way. For all we know, any damage done is permanent, or it could mess up the relationship the Light has with the Hunger.” 

“It’s not like that’s such a  _ great  _ relationship in the first place. Kinda toxic, if you ask me.” 

Lucretia grinned. “Sure, but it’s working in our favor. Right now, at least.” 

“Yeah.” Lup tossed a stress ball up in the air and caught it again. Stress balls on this planet were cool — they were made of thousands of tiny, squishy beads that weren’t sticky but could be easily compressed into different shapes. Right now it was more of a stress dildo, actually. Lup was happy to live in a world with Bugles and stress balls. It was always the small, familiar comforts that made the biggest difference. “I mean, we can make an educated guess about which part of the planar universe the Light is from. Like, not to get too wild here, but I’m thinking the plane of  _ light  _ is a good candidate?” 

“Pfft. Right. Except, as far as I know, there’s nothing in the plane of light that would explain the, uh…” 

“Craveability!” Lup said a little too loud. Maybe Magnus was growing on her, or maybe it was just a fun word to say. 

“Yes, the craveability and all the other magical effects. Doesn’t that word make it sound like a — ”

“Like a Fantasy McDonald’s breakfast special, yeah, I know.” Lup adopted her best radio announcer voice. “Come on down to Mickey D’s and get our number one seller-tested, buyer-approved hot item, the most  _ crrrrraveable  _ thing on the menu, the Light of Creation. Bah duh buh buh buh.” 

Lucretia laughed that breathy, wild laugh, for what seemed like a long time. Lup didn’t mind — she had admitted to herself by now that she liked hearing Lucretia laugh. Not that it meant anything. She liked hearing  _ anyone  _ laugh. 

“Speaking of the ol’ FMD, I feel like it’s a crime that they don’t have it on every plane at this point. What’s the point of all that brand marketing if they can’t open up a spot in hamster heaven, amirite?”

Lucretia narrowed her eyes. “You never struck me as the McDonald’s type. You and Taako seem like you’d be more into, I don’t know, the Fantasy Cheesecake Factory.” 

“Well, duh, that too. But I go crazy for those good, hot nugs.” Lup jumped up from the couch, stricken with inspiration. “Then again, who doesn’t? I think we might be hungry.” 

“Are we going to Taako and Merle’s place?” 

“Fuck yeah we are,” Lup said. 

“Excellent. It’s almost lunch time, anyways.” 

Lup turned away to hide her smile while Lucretia gathered up her notebook, pen, and keys. Just a few cycles ago, she couldn’t have imagined Lucretia taking an unplanned break from work to go beg Taako for food. But recently it seemed like the other woman was finally out of her shell, more confident and less uptight, fitting in with the rest of the group like a hand to a glove. Lup didn’t like to take credit for other people’s character growth, but she thought she might have rubbed off on Lucretia a little. 

And Lucretia might have rubbed off on her, too. Lup found herself thinking more analytically after all these years together, with a newfound instinct to take advantage of every resource she had at hand. That was Lucretia all over. 

Outside the skyscraper that housed the lab, they caught a transport to get to Taako and Merle’s shared apartment. The colorful plastic tubes contained moving walkways and functioned like a trolley or bus system, ultimately much less exciting than Merle had seemed to anticipate when they arrived at this world. But they had been here for several weeks now, and the cleric’s childlike glee still hadn’t worn off, so maybe it didn’t matter. 

Within minutes, they were wiping their feet on a welcome mat printed with the phrase “VAPERS RIGHTS NOW.” Lucretia rang the doorbell, but the muffled sound of a chime coming from within the apartment was conspicuously absent. 

Lup stepped forward. “There’s no way these two chucklefucks have allowed any sort of system that might wake them up from a good nap. They probably disabled that thing the second they moved in here.” She took out her wand and cast Thunderclap. There was an enormous booming noise, so loud that the windchime of Taako and Merle’s downstairs neighbors shattered and broke. 

Lucretia frowned. “That was unpleasant.”

Merle opened the door, rubbing his ears. Lup grinned at Lucretia triumphantly. “Hey, you can’t argue with results.” 

“What  _ the hell  _ do you guys want?” Merle demanded. He was dressed in an oversized Snuggie and a pair of fluffy slippers designed to look like fish were eating his feet. “You woke me up from a good nap.” 

Lup nodded sympathetically. “Sorry. We need food.” 

Like an apparition taking form in a summoning circle, Taako was suddenly standing behind Merle. He wore a billowy white shirt, a short cloak, and striped shorts. On anyone else it would have looked absurd, but on Taako it was just a fashion statement. “Welcome to the bachelors’ pad,” he said gloomily. “I’m a total mess right now. Come back later.”

“Oh, that sounds really sad for you. The thing is, uh… we’re  _ hungry?  _ So, I’m just gonna —  _ ”  _ Lup started to push past the two of them into the apartment, but Taako held out an arm to stop her.

“Are you hungry for half-frozen pizza rolls and Mountain Dew and expired jerky sticks? Because that’s all we have here in this miserable little man cave.” 

“Taako, I can literally smell fresh garlic bread. You’re making hand-rolled brown butter gnocchi and garlic bread, probably a nice baby arugula side salad, too. You can’t slip this one past me.” 

“Oh, my God.” He put his face in his hands. “Fine. But just so you know, it’s lemon roasted asparagus, not arugala, you  _ fucking _ madwoman. Arugala is way too bitter to pair with a creamy sage and brown butter sauce, okay?”

Lup just laughed and hip-checked him out of the doorway so she and Lucretia could enter. 

Over the past decade or so, Taako had continued his quest to become Top Chef of the known universe. As far as she could remember, Lup had never seem him so committed to something before in their lives, and she thought the whole thing was pretty rad. She often joined him in the kitchen — especially when there was an opportunity for her to use evocation magic to cook — and while she still considered it more Taako’s thing _ ,  _ they had both shown a real aptitude for it. 

And the proof was in the pudding, so to speak, although Lup still hadn’t taken so much as a single bite of pudding after the incident with the chair. She couldn’t resist closing her eyes to savor the pillowy texture and complex flavors as she forked tender potato balls into her mouth. “This is some pretty bomb-ass knocky,” she said, purposefully mispronouncing the word the way Taako used to say it before he became the younger, prettier elven version of Bobby Flay. 

“Thanks.” He took a giant swig of Mountain Dew — apparently he hadn’t been kidding about that item on the man cave list. “So, what’s up with the Light of Creation? Made any Fantasy Jurassic Park-level breakthroughs?” 

Lup glanced over at Lucretia, who was attacking a piece of garlic bread with surprising fervor, and then looked away to give her some privacy. Taako’s garlic bread could be an almost religious affair. “Uh, no, not quite. Still trying to nail down its, you know, origin story. Where it came from, who it dated in middle school, whether or not it likes long walks on the beach, et cetera.” 

“What do we know so far?” asked Merle, who had just jammed an entire piece of asparagus into his mouth in a way that was deeply disturbing to watch.

“Not much.” Lucretia turned her attention away from her plate and leaned forward, getting that intense look in her eyes that came whenever she talked about her work. “We know, or at least suspect, that it isn’t from the Prime Material plane. Neither is the Hunger, which functions essentially as its own weird, sentient plane, so there might be some connection there. But the Light of Creation has an inherent magic that — well, it might be from the gods, or it could be something else entirely. We can guess it’s not from the plane of light, because there’s no magic there. None of the elemental planes make any sense as a source. Neither does the plane of thought or the astral plane. So that leaves the ethereal plane, the plane of magic, or the celestial plane.”

Taako stabbed a spear of asparagus with his fork. “Well, okay. I chill in the ethereal plane sometimes to scare the shit out of Merle when I pop back here, and it feels totally different from the Light, so I think you can cross that one off. Wouldn’t the plane of magic be the obvious option? ‘Cause this thing seems magical as all hell to me.” 

“Sure,” Lucretia conceded. “Which would also imply that, in  _ theory, _ the rules of magic in the Prime Material plane will apply to it, and we can indirectly take control of its magical essence and  _ whatever. _ If not, we’ll have our work cut out for us.” 

“Have you tried casting Identify on it?” asked Merle. He seemed excited by the prospect that he might be able to help. Too bad they would have to shoot him down immediately.

Lup tried to restrain herself from giving a snarky answer and failed. “Uh, no shit, dude. That was the first thing we tried, along with tons of other spells. Basically everything that wouldn’t risk damaging it or changing its properties. But it seems like it’s impervious to most forms of divination, which might imply that it  _ isn’t _ from the plane of magic.” 

“And that leaves… the celestial plane? Where the gods live?” Merle wore a faraway expression that Lup didn’t trust.

“Yeah, but remember the gods are different here. The celestial plane and everything in the planar system changes along with the prime material plane when we switch cycles, so don’t get any bright ideas about chatting them up. It  _ will not  _ go well for you.” 

Merle’s hopefulness faded, and now he just seemed disappointed. “Oh, okay. If you say so.”

“This isn’t an easy puzzle, Merle,” Lucretia told him gently. “We’ve been working on it for years, and — and we still know very little about the forces that are keeping us here. But we’ll get it eventually.” Her face steeled over with determination. “I promise we will.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i know nothing about pokemon or dnd magic rules. whatever :]


	9. Caught Red-Handed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lup loses some sleep. Lucretia tells the truth.

About halfway into the year, Magnus and the rest of the crew returned with the Light of Creation. They had apparently nearly died several times in an ancient underwater temple, but they had recovered what they were looking for, so Lup counted it as a sum total gain. While Barry, Magnus, and Davenport made plans to train under local martial arts masters, she and Lucretia took the Light back to their lab and started to plan some  _ real  _ experimentation. 

The scope of what they could do was still fairly limited. A large portion of the spells they knew had damaging effects, and a large portion of the remaining ones were either useless in this context or didn’t seem to work on the Light. But they still had access to several rooms full of advanced scientific equipment — which was more than they had going for them in the last few cycles — and they spent long hours running test after test after test, essentially throwing spaghetti at the world’s most slippery wall. 

A couple weeks after they gained possession of the Light, Lup found herself so exhausted she couldn’t drag herself to bed at the end of the day. She and Lucretia had their own bedrooms and a small kitchen area on the other side of the floor’s main hallway, separated from the lab area that was actually in use by a series of empty and semi-empty storage rooms. 

After spending eight straight hours in the lab, with breaks only to fuel up on conjured Pringles and fruit slices while tossing pieces of ice from their minifridge down at folks on the balconies of the building’s lower floors, the short distance to Lup’s bedroom seemed like an eternity. Lucretia had retired almost an hour ago. She’d said goodnight only under the stipulation that Lup would go to bed soon, which she really had intended to do. She untied her ponytail, tucked her wand away inside her robe, and collapsed on her favorite cushiony oval couch, asleep within moments. 

Her eyes flew open in the middle of the night, and at first, she wasn’t sure why. Then she heard it — the soft padding of footsteps, someone walking from the entrance to the room towards its center. The sound was barely-there, a whisper of bare feet against cool hard floors, but Lup’s elven perception allowed her to detect it without much trouble.

It wasn’t exactly unusual for Lucretia to wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes she just had insomnia, sometimes she had to go to the bathroom, sometimes she was stricken with the sudden urge to write something down. Lup had never told her friend this, but being an incredibly light sleeper, she woke up every time along with Lucretia. 

Lup would lie motionless in bed, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the quiet sounds of Lucretia tossing and turning and then finally getting up and making herself a cup of tea. She’d never admit it, but it was one of the things she most relied on for comfort — knowing that someone else was occupying the same space as her, doing mundane things in the middle of the night, existing with her in that filmy solitude of darkness. 

She’d always had it with Taako, the knowledge that someone else was awake when she was, that she was safe and not alone. But with Lucretia, she always had to stop herself from getting up and going to talk to her. There was something different about talking to people in the middle of the night, like a conversation barrier that fell down after sunset, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what she would say to Lucretia if that barrier was gone.

This time, though, Lucretia was coming into the lab, and it must have been one or two in the morning. What business could she possibly have in the  _ lab  _ right now?

Not daring to sit up, Lup turned her head at an angle so she could see the other woman. After she’d blinked away the sleep, her dark vision made it easy to watch Lucretia walk slowly and carefully towards the supply closet. 

Lup’s heart sped up. That closet was where they kept the Light of Creation overnight. It was hidden in a box full of stress balls, in case anyone besides the two of them came in looking for it. It was their most important possession, and they couldn’t allow it to be lost or stolen or damaged in any way. 

And apparently, Lucretia wanted it  _ now,  _ when she thought Lup wasn’t around. Or maybe she was just in the mood for a late-night stress ball, but somehow Lup doubted that. 

She watched as Lucretia eased open the closet door, reached into the box, and withdrew the Light.  _ Oh, God.  _ Lup’s mind was spinning so fast she was almost dizzy. Was Lucretia a sleeper agent for the Hunger? Was she going to have to fight her? Because Lucretia had gotten pretty good at spellcasting over the past years — well, okay, Lup could still take her, probably, but why — 

Lucretia set the Light down on a countertop and just looked at it for a moment. Even from across the room, Lup could feel its desire to be wanted, that intoxicating warmth radiating outward. It was a nice feeling — it could almost have put her back to sleep, if she weren’t on fucking pins and needles waiting to find out what Lucretia was doing.

As Lup watched, Lucretia reached into her pocket and pulled out her wand. She whispered some words to herself, never taking her eyes off the Light. The phrases felt intimately familiar to Lup, and she could see Lucretia’s wand start to glow a warm red-orange. But it wasn’t until the final moment before the spell was cast, when she could actually smell the heady, acrid scent of the magic, like a match being lit, that Lup realized what it was.

Lucretia was casting Fire Bolt. 

Lup stood straight up and yelled, “Hey, what the  _ fuck? _ ”

Lucretia lost concentration, and as she yanked her wand away from the Light, the spell’s trajectory shifted towards Lup. 

Without even thinking about it, Lup cast Shield. The flaming projectile bounced off of a wall of magical force and fell to the ground uselessly, where Lup stomped on it to put it out. She’d forgotten she was barefoot, though, and there was a horrible sizzling noise as her feet burned. 

“Oh,  _ fucking shit,  _ ow, ow, ow — ” Lup hopped around and then finally fell back onto the couch, holding one of her feet in both hands. The skin on the bottom of it was already blistering. 

“ _Damn it,_ _Lup,_ ” Lucretia nearly yelled. She rushed over to the couch and grabbed Lup’s ankles, casting Healing Word as quickly as Lup had ever seen it cast. The pain in Lup’s feet faded away, and the bright red skin returned to its usual warm brown. 

“Sorry,” Lup said sheepishly. “Wait, no! You should be sorry! What the fuck were you doing, casting Fire Bolt on the Light of Creation? Were you sleepwalking, or have you just gone completely off the rails?” 

“I didn’t know you were in here…” Lucretia trailed off. She was still holding Lup’s feet, and she inspected the bottoms of them carefully. “You’re okay, right? Do you need another heal?”

“I’m  _ fine. _ ” Lup all but kicked Lucretia’s hands away and pulled her knees in close to her chest. “Just tell me what you were doing.”

Lucretia got up from her crouching position, stood awkwardly for a moment, and then sat on the couch next to Lup. “I — were you watching me that whole time?”

Lup nodded. “Yeah. Dark vision comes in handy when your  _ fucking roommate decides to use evocation magic on the most valuable object in the world. _ ” 

“I’m sorry, Lup. I’m really sorry.” Lucretia sounded so small, so defeated, that Lup couldn’t stop the anger from melting out of her body.  _ Damn it.  _

“Please tell me what you were doing.” 

“I just — I had to know.” Lucretia stared down at her feet. The Light of Creation illuminated Lucretia’s face in a gentle, buttery glow and made a huge shadow of her on the wall behind them. Watching the shadow, Lup thought it seemed just as guilty as Lucretia herself. 

“Know what?” Lup shifted closer to Lucretia on the couch. She wanted to put an arm around the other woman, to tell her it was okay, but that would be fucking crazy. Lucretia had done something awful. 

“I had to know if regular magic works on it. I’m so  _ tired,  _ Lup. We’ve been going in circles for months, tiptoeing around anything that might damage this thing, when I’m pretty sure it’s impervious to damage anyways. I just want to test every spell we possibly can, because we  _ have  _ to find a way to harness its power somehow if we’re ever going to win this war. This is the only object that has any sway over the Hunger at all, and  _ we need that. _ ”

Lup unfolded her legs from her chest and leaned back against the wall. In retrospect, this might have been a poor decision, because now her entire thigh was pressed up against Lucretia’s and she really did feel like she was burning up. “I get it. It sucks not being able to do anything with the Light. And I know you’ve got something in mind… maybe you want to turn it into a giant ray gun that’ll blast the Hunger out of the sky once and for all, I don’t know. I know you want the Light’s power. I get that, Cretia, but I’m not gonna let you take these kinds of risks.”

Lucretia sucked in her breath. “Okay. I won’t do it again.”

“Mmm… but is that a real promise, or what? Because you could just, like, say that, and then come right back in here tomorrow night and blast the Light with Magic Missile.” Lup turned towards Lucretia, searching her face for any sign of dishonesty. 

“It’s — it’s real.” Lucretia didn’t look away. 

Lup bit the corner of her lip. She was usually great at telling when people were lying, but Lucretia was more difficult to read. She said slowly, “Make me believe you.”

They were inches apart. Lup watched as Lucretia’s eyes flicked down to her own mouth. Everything was quiet for a long moment, and Lup was overwhelmed by the sound of their breathing, building louder and louder in her head until it sounded like waves crashing on a distant shore.

Lucretia blinked. “Um. I — ”

“Oh, wait, uh, I have an idea,” Lup stumbled over her words, barely able to piece together a coherent thought. As soon as she spoke, she wished she hadn’t. She wished she knew what Lucretia was thinking. Something in her chest ached. “We’re using all our spell slots way too early, but whatever.” And she cast Zone of Truth. 

Lucretia laughed — not her normal, musical laugh, but something nervous and high-pitched. “Okay, cool. So… I have no intention of casting any damaging spells on the Light of Creation, now or in the future.”

“Good.” Lup’s heart rate was slowly returning to normal. She was also starting to deeply regret the Zone of Truth spell. There were other secrets, weighing down the tip of her tongue like a bag of rocks, and the shimmering magic field coaxed her to let them spill out. It was all she could do to keep her mouth shut. “Uh, I guess we’re done here? So I think I’m gonna spend the night at Taako and Merle’s now. It’s — scary — waking up to someone in the room with you — so — ” She had to force the words out. They weren’t a lie,  _ exactly,  _ but it certainly wasn’t the real reason she wanted to get out of this building ASAP. 

Lucretia looked disappointed. When she spoke, her words had the same sluggish quality as Lup’s did when she was trying to fight the effects of the spell. “Okay — um — that’s fine.” 

Lup almost sprinted out of the room, not even bothering to take a blanket or a toothbrush. She was never casting Zone of Truth again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i love the implications of zone of truth combined with secret pining especially if you consider that in taz the zone of truth rules basically require people to shout out whatever lies they're trying to hide. naturally lup's only solution to this problem is to just book it to taako's place


End file.
